The Ascent to the Anthropological Idea of Freedom: the Age of Antiquity

Abstract

The article reveals the process of formation of the anthropological paradigm of the idea of freedom on the materials of ancient culture. The method is dialectics of ascent from the abstract to the concrete. Antique culture produces the first stage of the ascension process, when freedom had a holistic but abstract character. Freedom was defined meaningfully as a qualitative state of man opposite to slavery. The author shows the dialectic nature of this process already at the first stage, when freedom and slavery were considered as opposites, passing into each other. The author analyses the experience of going beyond the ancient paradigm of freedom, which formed the ideological elements and prerequisites of freedom in subsequent epochs.